FUT Hair Transplant

FUT Hair Transplants in Leeds

An FUT hair transplant involves the older method of hair transplantation via strip harvesting. It is useful for patients in or near Leeds that don’t wish to shave their donor area. Dr Elgindi is one of the very few UK hair transplant doctors that can perform both FUT and FUE surgeries.

What is a Follicular Unit Transplant?

Follicular Unit Transplant (FUT) is also referred to as the strip method. This method involves cutting a linear strip of skin from the back of the head and dissecting it to harvest hair follicles for transplantation.

The FUT method is the old way of performing hair transplants as the large linear scar it leaves at the back of a patient’s head is undesirable, however on the positive side, patients don’t have to shave their donor area so this method is more suited to women and transgender people that typically will always leave their hair long, so they will hide the scar.

The incisions and implantation process is still the same as the FUE hair transplant method so the only difference is in the extraction of the DHT-resistant follicles from the patient’s donor area.

How Does a FUT Hair Transplant Work?

The first step is to plan the transplant with the doctor via the design of the hairline or crown and then assess and plan the strip extraction. Once this has been done, local anaesthetic is administered to the donor area and the strip of skin gets excised. The wound is then sutured up by the surgeon whilst the technician team work on cutting and slithering the strip to harvest, count and categorise the grafts. State of the art microscopes are used for this part of the process as it’s probably one of the most time consuming aspects of this surgery.

The surgeon will then make thousands of tiny incisions in the recipient area (please note, if the recipient area is thinning, some shaving will be required to give a clear line of sight to the surgeon) using either steel blades or sapphire blades. These small incisions create tiny pockets where the team will be implanting the previously extracted grafts into.

Cost of FUT Hair Transplant Surgery

The cost of FUT hair transplant surgery in Leeds starts from £4,000 and can go up to £8,000+. The reasons for our pricing are:

• Surgeon-led surgery – the surgeon performs all the necessary steps of the surgery and not technician-led.
• 1 patient per day per doctor policy – gives all the team’s focus on you rather than splitting it amongst 2 or more patients on the day in order to lower the cost but also the safety, quality and results.
• Doctor experience and availability – Due to there only being a small supply of doctors in the UK that perform FUT and have a lot of experience in performing this surgery, there is a lot of value to be had by patients by our service.

FUT Surgery VS. FUE Surgery

FUT surgery is still used by some clinics, but it is gradually being replaced in favour of FUE surgery. Healthy follicles are removed from the donor area of the scalp during FUE, and then grafted on to the areas you need them most.

Local anaesthetic is used here, which eliminates some risks associated with other transplant procedures. There will be no scarring that you can detect, and you’ll be able to go back to work the next day. It’ll only take up to 7 days to heal fully.

There’s a much better survival rate with FUE, which is why so many more people are opting for it over FUT. With FUT you may require stitches, but as FUE is a minimally invasive treatment, that won’t be the case. Some patients find the treatment so relaxing that they fall asleep during it!

You’ll be left with a dense, naturally looking head of hair with no way to detect the procedure you’ve had done. The great thing about FUE is that you can also have scars from previous surgeries corrected. You’ll notice immediate results but the best results will come around 6-12 months after your treatment.